A Unity Meeting at Bethany . . .

ALEXANDER CAMPBELL: 100 YEARS LATER

It was shortly before midnight, March 4, 1866 that Alexander Campbell departed this life. He was 78 years old. It had been fifty-seven years since he had left his native Ireland to come to the new world. He had been a reformer on the American frontier almost that long. He was a pioneer in education, not only in working for free public schools for all, but in founding the first college in America that made the Bible the basis of its curriculum. He had been an editor of religious periodicals for forty-four years. He was among the first scientific farmers and ranchers on the frontier, a leader in the wool-growing industry, a publisher of considerable reputation, and one of the instigators of one of the first freeways (or toll highways) into the western frontier.

When he died in the village that he himself founded and in the home where he had lived for fifty-five years, our young nation lost one of its most illustrious and versatile sons. He stood for all that made America great. Starting with the proverbial shoestring (if 150 acres or so of land that his father-in-law gave him can be considered a shoestring) he became one of Virginia’s richest men. He not only founded a college, but gave it his farm for a campus and endowed it with his money. In his own little village he was everything from postmaster to college president. Abroad he was lecturer in the arts, reformer of religion and education, minister, debater, politician, as well as editor and publisher. He was a pioneer in broadcloth, or a gentleman of the frontier. He was a much traveled man and a conversationalist of the first order.

But his significance to the twentieth century is more than all these things. He was a precursor to the ecumenical movement, laboring for the unity of all Christians at a time when the subject was unpopular. He inspired the first union of churches ever to occur on American soil, and he set forth principles for the unity of all believers that are still valid.

I wanted to do something special on this March 4, the one hundredth anniversary of Campbell’s death, something beside reading and writing about him. So I thought I would call Louis Cochran in Nashville, who probably knows Alexander Campbell better and appreciates him as much as any living man. So, at the very hour “the Bishop” was dying one hundred years before, I called Mr. Cochran to congratulate him for doing so much to make Campbell live in our generation. His research on Campbell, which has resulted in many lectures and studies as well as novels and articles, has done much to make the Sage of Bethany relevant to our time. While I have not yet met Mr. Cochran personally, we have corresponded so extensively and shared ideas so much, that I think of him as an old friend.

It will interest our readers to know that Louie Cochran has been asked by a leading publishing house to write a history of the entire Campbellite movement, which will tell the story of all of our groups, and not just one of them. He has moved from California to Nashville so as to have ready access to historical documents. The publishers selected the right man, not only because he is an excellent writer and story-teller, but because he is “a disciple-at-large,” as I like to call myself, that enjoys fellowship with all the Campbellite groups. We think it a fitting tribute that Cochran would undertake this project in the centennial year of Campbell’s passing.

Louis Cochran is doing more than even he may realize for the unity of our great brotherhood. His novels on Campbell and Raccoon Smith have been read by the rank and file of all our segments, which in turn has had a tremendous influence in alerting our people to what our movement is all about .There are two important aspects in our work for unity that Cochran’s work has enhanced. One is scholarship and the other is history. There is an important relationship between our divisive party spirit and our moral obligation to be intelligent. Cochran’s scholarship and in tel I i g en c e have reached out to all levels among us and have lifted us upward. We read and learn that our movement had thinkers for its leaders, that our pioneers were men of ideas as well as action. And it is thinking and intelligence and scholarship, which characterized our pioneers (including Raccoon Smith) as Cochran so well depicts, that will go far in ridding us of the littleness that keeps us a divided people.

And the fact that all our groups have a common historical background is an important resource in our efforts to close ranks. As we become more conscious of our history, and more curious as to how we became a great religious movement, we will begin to discover that we have too much in common to let ourselves remain divided.

It is the reason of our common history that a meeting is being called for this summer in Bethany of representatives from all of our several groups in tribute to the life and work of Alexander Campbell. You will be reading announcements of Campbell After a Century: the Man and His Influence, which will be a conference for all Campbellites, with a few Baptists and Presbyterians saying some things about what Campbell means to them. All our people are urged to share in this gathering, whether liberals or conservatives, cooperatives or non-cooperatives, instrumental or non-instrumental, class or non-class, premill or amill—everybody! Invitations are going out to leaders of all these groups to be on the program. The dates are July 2-4.

This is not intended to be simply speeches about Campbell. To the contrary it calls for dialogue on the nature of our divisions and what can be done about it. Why don’t you plan your vacation so as to be able to attend. Tours are planned that will allow one to see the landmarks of the beginning of the Restoration Movement, including such things as the site of the Brush Run Church (our first congregation) and the stream where the Campbells were immersed.

There can be no greater tribute to Alexander Campbell than for a real unity meeting to be held in the very village that cradled our movement. It is tragic that after a century we are divided as we are, but it will be a testimony to our faith in what Campbell was trying to do for all of us to pray and talk together where our pioneers labored and died.

Maybe we would do well to reproduce somewhat the kind of atmosphere that Campbell himself described when he recalled the humble beginnings of the Restoration Movement thirty years later. He wrote as follows in 1842 concerning the first meeting at what was later to be known as the Brush Run Church, of which at first there was no house at all.

I have yet extant the exordium, or a part of the exordium and some of the details of a discourse pronounced under an oak, eight miles from our present residence, in the month of June, 1811 (2nd Lord’s day, I’ think) with a special reference to the organization of a new church, founded on the New Testament alone, and meeting for the first time to commemorate the Lord’s death statedly on every Lord’s day.

The table was spread in the woods, and some sixty or seventy disciples, gathered out of various denominations, had assembled to show forth the Lord’s death, covenanting with each other to follow the truth, the whole truth of Christianity, whithersoever it might lead us, without regard to former prepossessions, manners, or customs.

The text that Campbell chose for this occasion was Job 8:7: “Though thy beginning be small, yet shall thy latter end greatly increase.” In asking himself, thirty years later, why he chose such a text, he could answer only that he had a strong conviction that “we had got hold of the great principles of ecclesiastical union and communion on which all real Christians of all denominations, might, could, and certainly would one day unite.”

And here we are, his own movement, tragically divided. Let’s go back to that same spot near Bethany and pray together - and start over again as a united people-and then go out into the world and unite all men in Christ! —the Editor